Rapper Ice Spice broke her silence about Matty Healy's previous comments mocking her ethnicity, saying she was "so confused" by the remarks.
Healy, the lead singer of the pop rock band The 1975, received backlash after he engaged in behavior some of his followers deemed racist, including laughing at and joining in on jokes mocking rapper Ice Spice while appearing as a guest on “The Adam Friedland Show” podcast in February. The podcast episode was pulled from Apple and Spotify after Healy’s fans called the remarks racist.
"When I had heard that little podcast or whatever, I was so confused," Ice Spice told Variety in an interview published Thursday. "Because I heard ‘chubby Chinese lady’ or some s--- like that, and I’m like, ‘Huh? What does that even mean?’ First of all, I’m thick. What do you mean Chinese? What? But then they apologized or whatever. And the whole time, I didn’t really care."
The rapper said she saw Healy at a recent Jean Paul Gaultier party and they discussed the incident.
"He was like, ‘Hey, you OK?’ and I’m like, ‘Of course.’ He apologized to me a bunch of times. We’re good," she said.
A representative for Healy did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Ice Spice’s recent remarks.
On the podcast episode, Healy, who is white, described how he slid into Ice Spice’s DMs and received no response.
He can also be heard laughing at jokes that hosts Friedland and Nick Mullen make about Ice Spice’s ethnicity (Ice Spice is Dominican and Nigerian). He appeared to encourage the co-hosts when they imitated Chinese and Hawaiian accents, and later laughed when the two imitated Japanese accents.
In April, Healy publicly apologized to Ice Spice while performing in Auckland, New Zealand.
“I never meant to hurt anybody,” he said. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you and, like, Ice Spice, I’m sorry. It’s not because I’m annoyed that me joking got misconstrued, it’s cause I don’t want Ice Spice to think I’m a d---. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry.”
In a June interview with The New Yorker, Healy addressed the podcast appearance and said “it doesn’t actually matter.”
